Boston is the capital and most populous municipality in the US state of Massachusetts. The town was settled by English colonists on 7 September 1630, and it was named for a town in Lincolnshire, England. Boston was the largest town in the Thirteen Colonies until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century, and it played a key role in starting the American Revolutionary War, with the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston taking place in or around Boston. After the revolution, Boston became one of the world's wealthiest international ports, and the old WASP Boston families (the Boston brahmins) were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites. In the 1820s, Boston's population grew rapidly as the result of the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants poured into the city, especially after the Irish Potato Famine, and around 35,000 Irish lived in Boston by 1850. In the latter half of the 19th century, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews also settled in the city. By the end of the century, the city was divided into ethnic enclaves: Italians inhabited the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews in the West End. The city went into decline by the mid-20th century as factories became old and obsolete and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. By the 1970s, the city's economy had recovered, and housing prices rose sharply after the 1990s. In 2016, the Boston metro area had a population of 4,628,910 people, with 45.4% being white, 22.6% African-American, 19.1% Hispanic, 9.7% Asian, 2.4% multiracial, .5% other, .2% Native American, and .04% Pacific islander.
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